The art of persuasion:

Proven Conversational Skills Techniques to learn Mind Control Methods, Reading & Influence Human Behavior and Improve the Hidden Art of Attraction.

In life, anywhere you look, there are chances to be persuaded. Whether it is the billboard you pass on your way to work, the person you text most often, or even the lover with whom you share children, these things and people can be influential and persuasive. While it is important to know how others may be influencing you, it is an entirely different concept to figure out how to influence others.

Persuasion and influence are an art, and like art, they take practice. After you have completed this reading, you will better understand persuasion. However, you may not be able to go out and convince everyone of what you want them to do right away. It takes time, but if you stay committed to your goals and dedicated to your intentions, you will become a master persuader in no time.

The aim of persuasion is not to manipulate but to bring people to decisions that are in their best interest and to help further worthwhile causes. These are causes that are beneficial and bring value to society. While you will most likely benefit from the persuasion tactics in which you choose to partake, you should ensure that they are beneficial for other parties involved as well.

If you continue to take from people but never give back, this behavior may haunt you one day. Persuasion and influence should be viewed in a positive light as tools that help people, not as a means of hurting others.

The foundation for the practice of influence and persuasion is understanding human psychology, how people make decisions, and how they are wired. Everyone is different, so the ways that you decide to persuade them will differ as well. If you are knowledgeable about psychology, you will have an easier time differentiating individuals and understanding what persuasion tactics are best used on them.

From there, techniques and practices can be pursued sincerely. If you are genuine with intention and actually want to help people, it will be easy to adopt the methods and strategies of some excellent influencers and persuaders. Remember that it is going to take some trial and error, and not everyone will agree with your viewpoint right away. Make sure that you are in a mindset where you are ready to take criticism and willing to accept the fact that some people just will not be persuaded.

Learning starts by making sure that you are aware of the power of influence and persuasion. They can be harmful tools if they are put into the wrong hands, and as you are reading these words, a few people probably come to mind right away. In order to ensure that you are not using these methods of influence improperly, we are going to take you through negative stereotypes to ensure that you are not someone who is going to take advantage of anyone.

When used correctly, persuasion and influence can elicit positive change in groups of people rather than just from individual to individual. Connecting with people on a general level and determining mutual interests will be helpful in ensuring you are someone who can easily persuade others.

When you understand that these methods can be very helpful in your life, you can start to learn ways in which you can implement the best practices into your everyday activity. There are many benefits and advantages to being a persuasive person. The most obvious one is that you will be better at getting what you want.

From there, you will realize that you have more confidence, which can seriously reduce stress and anxiety. By reducing these things alone, you are going to feel much better; you will have the power needed to be the person you have always wanted to be.

It is important to know the difference between influence and persuasion. They are related, and you cannot have one without the other. However, the terms are not interchangeable. One means a specific moment, and the other is in reference to a more prolonged period of encouragement.

Once you learn how to be persuasive, you will most likely be happier altogether. Instead of sitting silently in the background, you will be able to use your voice to speak up for what matters. Though it might seem scary at times, you are going to become the person you have always admired; an influential and inspirational leader who knows what it takes to be successful. Your confidence will keep building over time, especially the more you practice refining your skills.

Examples are provided, but remember to apply the methods and techniques specifically to your situation. We are all different, and our levels of expertise differ as well. You will be confronting those you wish to persuade, so ensure that you are personalizing your strategies to your individual life. That is what being a persuasive influencer is all about!

Principles Of Persuasion

When we discuss manipulation and persuasion, it usually comes down to a difference of intent. For instance, is the person who is persuading you to do something that will benefit both you and them? If so, that’s the classic win-win scenario, and we could say that persuasion was used to help you come to the right decision.

But what if the same person gets you to do something that benefits him, but leaves you worse off? That would be characterized as manipulation, and that type of persuasion happens all of the time, too. You may have done it yourself without really realizing it, and not felt too good about it afterward.

Persuasion can be used for all kinds of purposes, both good and evil. People can manipulate you into giving them your money, your time, your faith, your talent, and provide you with nothing in return. Or they can persuade you into giving of all of these things and leave you better off in the end. And sometimes, the lines aren’t so clearly drawn.

Ultimately, everyone makes their own decisions. By being aware of persuasion techniques, you can more successfully analyze your motivations and make sure that what you are doing benefits both you and others.

Today’s Pervasive Persuasion

Persuasion is also an important topic today because we are contacted by more and more sophisticated methods of persuasion than ever before. Persuasion comes at us in all forms, at a velocity never even possible before. I’m sure you can guess the cause of this increased persuasion. That’s right! It’s called The Internet.

Never before have people had direct access to the tools of mass communication. You can pick up your smartphone and start broadcasting live right now, with just a few clicks. You can start typing and send your views to millions of people around the world. Or you can post a picture of that adorable thing your cat just did to your partner to brighten their day at work. And all of the people you are reaching can get that information instantly because they probably have a smartphone or computer or screen nearby that they are looking at, and you have access to that network. This type of reach and access was unheard of only a decade or two ago. Today, this connection is commonplace and growing.

The Principles of Persuasion

Since that book, many researchers have created experiments to test these theories with surprisingly consistent results. The bottom line is that we humans seem to be hard-wired to behave in certain ways given certain circumstances. Using various methods to trigger those responses that we want, we can cause the outcomes that we want.

The 6 Principles Of Persuasion

Reciprocation

Give something to get something, right? Remember the story of the chicken who planted grain so that her chicks could eat? She asked for help to sow the grain, to keep the field clean from weeds, to harvest the grain and finally, to make the bread. She asked her neighbors and friends to help, but in the end, no one was interested until the bread was hot and ready to eat. Since her neighbors had not given her anything in the form of help, she was not inclined to give them any of the final product.

That give and take is the first principal of getting along in life, and it’s known as one of the foundational principals of persuasion as well. Reciprocity merely means that if you give someone something, they are more likely to give you something in return.

Commitment and Consistency

We, humans, have a “reality” surrounding us at all times. I put this “reality” in quotes because it is a reality of our creation.

Our brains have an innate ability to tell stories, and we tell ourselves stories all of the time. We tell ourselves stories of the type of person we believe we are, and how we behave feeds into that story. When presented with a choice, you make that choice based on the story of who you are. One of the options looks “right” to us because making that choice is consistent with what we believe a person like us would do.

Social Proof

This core persuasion principle is also sometimes referred to as Consensus. We have told ourselves a story of what we believe we are, what we stand for, and the kind of person we are. To reinforce that story, we look at how other people behave for Social Proof of how people like us should react in a particular situation.

Now more than ever, the Internet has created countless places where we can go for this type of reinforcement. Some of that reinforcement is legitimate, some not so much. All of it is used as a powerful tool for persuasion, as we’ll find out going forward.

Authority

Now once we have decided on the type of person we are and we’ve assembled with the kinds of people we believe reinforce that identity; the next step is to seek out knowledgeable people to reinforce what we’ve told ourselves to be true. That’s where the idea of Authority takes hold.

As sane people, we are likely to take the advice of people who appear to have more knowledge about a subject than we do. That is certainly necessary. No one can know everything, not even with smartphones and Google just a tap away. We seek out the advice of people who know more about a subject than we do.

Liking

Liking is one of those core principles that seems obvious, but yet it needs definition since it is at the hub of all types of persuasion. Liking, simply put, means that you are much more likely to be persuaded by someone that you like.

If you don’t like someone, are you going to take their advice? Probably not. We humans are wired to make snap judgments about almost every situation we get into, and one of the simplest decisions to make is whether we like someone or not. Every person you meet triggers a feeling instantly of comfort or wariness. This was a survival skill in the early days of our evolution, and it still holds sway today, as we’ll see.

Scarcity

Speaking of evolution’s early days, our final persuasion principal is an obvious holdover from the early days of staying alive. Scarcity makes things more valuable to us, so when something seems like it is limited in quantity, we are more likely to want it.

Sand is commonplace; gold is not. Which would you rather have? Or more to the point, what does all humankind want more? It most certainly used to be food that was so valuable, so that early man found ways to preserve food when it was abundant so that it would be around when food got scarce.

Survival depends on specific resources that can be in short supply, so humans are naturally prone to try and save and hang on to that which is not always available. Since this is core hardwiring in our brains, we’ll see that this is an often-used method of persuasion today.

Chapter 1                  Art Of Persuasion

Persuasion is a theme of dark psychology that can be said to share quite a bit of similarity to manipulation. This is because they are both deployed in order to influence the motivations, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of a particular victim. There are a number of reasons why we adopt persuasion into our everyday lives, but the main one would have to be to get people with different ideas on the same page. In company, for instance, the persuasion method will be used to alter the attitude of a person towards an item, concept, or a particular event that is taking place. Either written or spoken phrases will be used during the process to express the other person’s thinking, emotions, or data. Another common instance you can use persuasion is to fulfil a private benefit. This would include either advocacy for trial when providing a pitch for sales or during an election campaign. Although none of these are deemed to be good or evil, they are still used to affect the listener to behave or believe in some manner.

One understanding of persuasion is that it utilizes one’s private or positional resources to alter other people’s attitudes or behaviors. Persuasion is a type of mind control that is constantly being used in society. You may attempt to convince them to believe the same way you do when you speak to someone about politics. You are persuaded to vote a certain way when you listen to a political campaign. There’s a lot of persuasion going on when someone is attempting to sell you a fresh item. This form of mind control is so prevalent that most people don’t even know it’s happening at all to them. The problem will arise when someone takes the time to convince you to believe ideals and values that do not suit your own value system. There are many distinct types of persuasion available. Not all of them have a bad intention, but they will all work to get the subject to change their minds about something. When a political candidate arrives on television, on Election Day they try to get the topic, or the voter, to vote on the ballot a certain way. The company that submitted that advertisement is attempting to get the victim to buy that item when you see a commercial on television or online. All of these are kinds of persuasion that are bent on attempting to modify the way they believe about the victim. To get the victim to modify their way of thinking. Dark persuasion has no moral motivation whatsoever. The motivation is rather amoral and sometimes largely immoral. If beneficial conviction is understandable as assisting individuals to help themselves, dark persuasion can be seen as a mechanism by which individuals behave against their own self-interest. Sometimes people make it reluctantly, knowing that they may not make the best choice, but are keen to stop the continuous persuasion efforts. On other occasions, the best dark persuaders can make someone think they act wisely when they actually do just the opposite.

So, what are the primary reasons for these dark persuaders? It depends on the type of person who persuades. Some people try to convince others to serve their own interests. Others do pure harm by the sole malicious intent. They may not profit from persuading anyone, but they do it anyhow, solely in order to bring pain to their victims. Others just appreciate the feeling of control provided by dark persuasion.

The result of dark persuasion is also different from positive persuasion. Positive persuasion usually results in one of three scenarios: benefit of the persuaded, benefit for the persuader and the persuaded or mutual benefit for the persuaded individual and a third party. All these results have a positive result for the person to be convinced. Sometimes other people benefit, sometimes they don’t. However, there is no situation where only the manipulator benefits.

Dark persuasion has a very distinct set of results. The persuader always advantages either immediately or by his distorted need for control and impact. The persuaded individual is against their own self-interest and is not persuaded. Finally, not only do the most qualified dark persuaders’ damage their victims, but they also damage others. Take a dark persuader who tells somebody to commit suicide so they can take advantage of an insurance policy. The persuader not only won financially, but also the victim lost his life and hurt everyone who knew or cared for them.

Who are these individuals who often tend to use dark persuasion? The main characteristic of a dark persuader is either indifference or an inability to be concerned about the impact of persuasion on others. They are either completely narcissistic and regard their own requirements to be far more essential than the requirements of others or they are sociopathic and unable to even understand the notion of the feelings of others. In a partnership, you often discover dark persuasion. In the worst case scenario, both partners are inclined to persuade the other darkly. The connection can be regarded psychologically abusive if such efforts are persistent and durable. Some instances of dark relationships include not allowing the other partner to take fresh jobs or to take private pleasure. The obscure persuader will persuade the victim to act “for the sake of friendship.” The victim merely hurts himself and the relationship in fact. The connection is being damaged as the dark persuader gains greater assurance that his victims can be manipulated.

Elements of persuasion

Like other types of control, some components are to be observed when it comes to persuasion. These components assist to precisely identify which persuasion makes it clearer. The ability to convince others is one salient feature that distinguishes persuasion from all other themes of dark psychology since the victim is in most cases allowed to make choices out of their own will, I as much as persuasion tactics will sooner work towards changing his will to that of the persuader. The topic can choose the manner they want to believe, whether or not they want to buy a product, or whether they believe the proof behind the persuasion is powerful enough to alter their minds. There are a few components in persuasion that assist to further describe what is while giving us a deeper understanding of this enigmatic theme.

The first element of this theme is that persuasion is often symbolic. What this means is that persuasion utilizes words, sound as well as images so as to get the message across to the specific victim. The logic behind this is quite simple really. For one individual to be able to persuade another into acting in a particular way, they will need to show them why they should act in said way and not vice versa. This is best achieved by using word sounds or various images you can use sentences to start a debate or argument to prove your point. Pictures are a great way to show the evidence needed to persuade someone to go one way or the other. Some nonverbal signs are possible, but they are not as effective as using words and images

The second key is that persuasion will be used deliberately to affect how others act or think. This one is quite obvious; you don’t use persuasion to get them to change if you don’t deliberately try to affect others. In order to get the topic to believe the same way they do, the persuader will attempt distinct strategies. This could be as easy as having a discussion with them or presenting proof supporting their point of perspective. On the other hand, to change the mind of the subject, it could involve much more and include more deceptive forms.

The distinctive thing about persuasion is that it enables some type of free will for the topic. In this way, the topic is permitted to create its own decision. For the most part, they don’t have to go for it, no matter how hard somebody tries to persuade them of something. The subject might hear about the best car to buy a thousand commercials, but if they don’t like that brand or don’t need a new vehicle at that time, they won’t go out and buy it. If the subject is against abortion, how many people will come out and say how great abortion is, it’s not likely that the subject will change their minds This enables much more freedom of choice than is found in the other types of mind control, which could explain why when questioned, many individuals do not see this as a kind of mind control. Persuasion is a type of mind control that can take place in many respects. While brainwashing, hypnosis and manipulation must happen face-to-face, and in some instances in full isolation, persuasion may happen otherwise.

Examples of persuasion can be found everywhere, including when you talk to individuals you know, on the Internet, on radio and television. It is also feasible to deliver persuasive messages by nonverbal and verbal means; although when verbal methods are used it is much more efficient

Subliminal persuasion

The word “subliminal” means underneath our consciousness. Subliminal persuasion means an advertising message that is displayed below the threshold of awareness or consumer awareness in order to persuade, persuade or help people change their minds without making them aware of what is going on. This is about affecting individuals with more than words. Some of the subliminal methods of persuasion impact our stimuli with smell, eyesight, sound, touch, and taste. There are mainly 3 subliminal methods of persuasion to affect anyone. They are

• Building a relationship-building relationship makes the other person feel comfortable. This will open up the other individual more. This can be accomplished through a healthy observation strength that matches their mood or state. This helps create confidence
• Power of discussion–the power of a powerful convincing person is much connected to an advertiser’s conversion. The correct words and inflections help you to be openly straightforward.
• Suggestive power-Associating useful and desirable stuff in discussion or interaction enables an individual to become more open to fresh thoughts.

Suggestion and emotional intelligence

This stage may be described as having one central and dominant idea focused on the participant’s conscious mind, which was to stimulate or decrease the physiological performance of the various regions within the participant’s body. Sooner, the use of different non-verbal and verbal suggestions was increasingly emphasized in order to convince the participant easily.

Basic Persuasion techniques

There are techniques that can be utilized so as to make persuasion more successful. All victims are usually presented with different forms of persuasion on a daily basis. A food manufacturing plant will work on getting their victims to purchase a new product, while a movie company will focus on persuading their victims to watch their latest movie projects. There are three main techniques of persuasion that have been prevalent since the birth of this theme.

Create a need

This is one of the techniques that are often deployed by the manipulator so as to be able to get the victim to change their way of thinking. This creates a need or rather appeals to a need that is already pre-existing within the victim. If it is executed in a skilled way, the victim will be eating out of the persuader’s palm in no time. What this means is that the manipulator will need to tap into the fundamental needs of their victim like for example their need for self-actualization. This technique will in most casework so well for the manipulator because the victim is actually going to need these things. Food for example is usually something that we as humans need in order to survive and prolonged lack will pause as a big problem.  If the agent can convince the subject that their store is the best, or if they can get more food or shelter by switching their beliefs, there is a higher chance of success.

Utilizing illustrative and words

The choice of words one chooses to use comes a long way in the success of using persuasion. There are many ways in which you can phrase sentences when actually talking about one thing. Saying the right words in the right way is what will make all the difference when attempting to use persuasion.

Tricks used by mass media and advertising

The media use two main methods which they use to persuade the masses. First is through the use of images, as well as the use of sounds.

Media persuasion by use of images

Our sighs and visual processing areas of the brain are very powerful. Just think about it for a minute, have you ever thought of a person without ending up picturing how they look? It is because of this that makes imagery and visual manipulation a preferred method by the media. Companies will often include split-second images of their product or individual inserted into an advertisement that seems quite innocent on the face value. This usually a form of subliminal persuasion. These split-second images that are usually assumed for the most part usually end up taking some form of control of the victim, which persuades them to purchase that particular service.

Media persuasion by the use of sound

Sound is yet another trick that is used by media in the persuasion of unsuspecting victims. Some people usually underestimate the powers that exist within the sound. But answer me this, how many times have you heard a song somewhere only to have it loops through your mind continuously? Songs usually have an influence on us even though we are not aware of it despite knowing you are listening to it. This is what the media tend to exploit in their quest for persuasion of the masses. There will often be a number of phrases skillfully hidden, and repeated in an advertisement song that will most likely convince you to be inclined to prefer one company over the other. An example of this is seen at McDonald’s. The melody ‘I’m lovin it ‘is often repeated in a manner that persuades the victims to constantly purchase their meals.

Chapter 2                 Indicators That You’re A Victim Of Manipulation

Once manipulation is identified, the next step is to get through it. Overcoming manipulation can be very challenging. In some cases, a 60 year-old-man might realize just now that his 85 year-old-mother is manipulative. They might never get through their issues, but they should still be confronted. Manipulation takes a part of both the abuser and the victim. It can ruin people’s lives, altering the direction they take and affecting the rest of their years. Manipulation can be hard to identify and even harder to overcome.

It can be done, and it should be attempted to get through. In a relationship based around manipulation, there might not be any coming back. Sometimes, people might just have to break up. You might have to get a divorce or stop calling your mom. It takes two people to partake in a manipulative scenario. Not both people will end up identifying it as a manipulative situation, however. In that case, the person that realizes what’s actually going on might just have to move on, the manipulator never realizing the damage they caused.

This can be a challenging part of overcoming manipulation. Usually, some instance of codependency formed, making it even harder to break away.

Hypnosis

If mind control is the best set of manipulation strategies for beginners to pick up and be able to learn quickly, then hypnosis is the next natural step in the process towards becoming a master of manipulation. In general, hypnosis lasts longer and is far more powerful than mind control is, although it also requires more skill to successfully pull off. While hypnosis has some concepts that overlap with mind control and brainwashing, it also has completely unique components, which can make it more challenging to learn. Hypnosis has a long a rich history, and today it is used in a wide variety of fields and industries, including in medicine, sports, psychotherapy, self-improvement, meditation and relaxation, forensics and criminal justice, art and literature, and the military. Of course, all instances of hypnosis share common characteristics no matter what context it is used in, and these same characteristics can come in handy when attempting to manipulate someone else. Having a good understanding of the principles and concepts of hypnosis can turn you from a mediocre manipulator into a highly skilled one.

The Hypnotic Trance

At its core, hypnosis is all about planting ideas into somebody else’s subconsciousness in order to influence their consciousness. If you manage to infiltrate a person’s subconsciousness with enough skill, they will not be aware of what you are doing, and will never know that you ever influenced them at all. The best way to access someone’s subconsciousness is to coax them into a relaxed, meditative state known as a hypnotic trance. Getting your target into a trance is the most difficult part of the process of hypnosis, but once you finally manage to pull it off, you will have a much easier time successfully manipulating them. Putting your target into a trance allows for you to have direct access to their subconsciousness, as their consciousness will no longer be an active part of their mind for the duration of the trance. The trace is what separates hypnosis from mind control, and the ability to induce it in somebody else is what separates a beginner of manipulation from a budding expert.

The best way to think of a hypnotic trance is a form of deep relaxation. You are likely already familiar with the overall concept of the trace, due to portrayals of hypnosis in book, movies, and popular culture in general. Of course, in real life, you cannot put somebody else into a hypnotic trance simply by waving a watch in front of their face or by using a magical code phrase that will put them to sleep. Instead, putting someone into a hypnotic trance takes lots of time and skill, and it may not always work on every single person that you try it out on, especially when you are first starting to attempt to use it. In fact, for the best introduction to the hypnotic trance, you may want to find a friend who is willing to allow you to put them into a trance in order to practice doing it, or if you cannot find someone who is a willing participant, you can always put yourself into a hypnotic trance using this same method. If you fail at putting somebody into a trance, you are likely to face a negative reaction from that person, as they are likely to recognize suspicious behavior when they see it if they still have full awareness of their surroundings. This is why it is important that you practice this technique several times before attempting it on any outsiders, as you are far more likely to succeed in putting somebody into a hypnotic trance if you have some familiarity with how it already works.

Advanced Techniques and Suggestibility Testing

At this point we have learned about various methods of manipulation through neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis. By now you are armed with a plethora of weapons to use on any given subject, and you are prepared defensively if someone attempts to use any of these tactics against you.

Suggestibility Testing

Many hypnotists will tell you that suggestibility testing is best left to the street performers and entertainment hypnotists. This may be true as it has limited viability in hypnotherapy but what many hypnotists don’t think about is everyday manipulation. Suggestibility testing is vastly utilizable in the realm of conversational hypnosis and everyday hypnosis towards the ends of manipulation. So what it is?

Suggestibility testing can refer to any number of verbal or physical “feelers” that help the hypnotist determine whether or not their subject is a good target for hypnosis and manipulation. They can serve as a guide for one to determine how likely a subject will bend to their will. Some hypnotists use suggestibility training to determine how deep into a hypnotic trance their subjects are but our purposes will be a little different.

For our intents and purposes we will use suggestibility testing to find our subjects in the first place. The reason anyone would want to use suggestibility testing is to find the right subject for manipulation. The caveat with hypnotism, even conversational hypnosis, is that some people are more suggestible to others. In other words, some people are less likely to be inducted into hypnosis than others. For this reason Dark NLP practitioners often use suggestibility testing to have a better idea of who they can manipulate and who they might not be able to.

The reason you will want to learn these tests is essentially for efficiency. For example, you wouldn’t want to use a lot of your time and effort trying to manipulate someone whom you’ve tested to have low suggestibility. It would just take too long and besides, there are tons of easily suggestible targets to choose from. In fact, it is estimated that as much as 80% of the population is in the average range of hypnotic suggestibility – meaning that up to 80% of the population can be successfully hypnotized with moderate effort.

That is why suggestibility testing is so useful for the Dark NLP practitioner. It gives a good guideline on who a prime subject might be and helps the practitioner avoid difficult subjects.

Suggestibility tests can be deployed fairly easily. Let’s take a look at some of the best methods for testing suggestibility.

The Light/Heavy Hands Technique

This method of suggestibility testing depends heavily on the concentration and that imagination of the subject. How keenly a person can bring their concentration and imagination into alignment is a very important factor. It will determine how susceptible they will be to actual hypnotic suggestion.

In this test you will be able to see a physical manifestation of their level of suggestion. It is sometimes called the book and balloon test as well and you will see why in just a moment. The idea behind this test is to see just how deeply one can delve into their own minds. The belief is that the body will react physically if someone is concentrating on something that they believe is true. If you see that your subject reacts bodily to the light/heavy hands technique then they are more than likely a prime target for Dark NLP and hypnosis. So here is what you are going to want to do:

Ask someone, or multiple people, to close their eyes and hold their arms straight out in front of them. Tell them to have one hand turned palm-up to the sky and one hand palm-down to the ground. Now tell them to imagine that in the hand that is facing toward the sky, they are carrying a watermelon. In the hand they have facing the ground, tell them that there are a bunch of helium balloons tied to their wrist.

Go into detail about the watermelon. They can smell it, feel its rind and most importantly, feel how heavy it is. With each passing moment their arms are getting more and more fatigued from the weight of the heavy watermelon. Meanwhile the arm with the balloons tied to it is getting lighter as the balloons are slowly and gently ascending towards the sky. What you should be doing while their eyes are closed is seeing if their arms are actually moving. If they are, then you’ve most likely found your subject.

The Amnesia Technique

The amnesia technique is a verbal test. In it you will ask the potential subject to forget about something for a period of time (it shouldn’t be more than a few minutes). For example, you can ask your subject to forget the letter P. Tell them to pretend that the letter P never existed and to forget that you even told them to forget about it. Then ask them to recite the alphabet. People who are moderately or highly suggestible will skip over the letter P (or whatever letter you tell them to forget) and not even realize it. Once again, if the person you tried this test on skips over the letter you told them to forget, they may be a good subject to zone in on.

The Locked Hand Technique

The locked hand technique (also known as the hand clasp technique) is another physical test that the subject will have to be willing to participate in. Like the light/heavy hand technique, it will test just how deeply a person can concentrate on the words you are saying to them and what you are telling them to imagine. Ask your subject to clap their hands together and keep them together, palm to palm. Then tell them to interlace their fingers. Make sure that you maintain fixed eye-contact with them throughout this test and tell them to push their hands together as tightly as they can. Tell them to imagine their hands merging into one piece of solid flesh and bone. After a minute or two, tell them to stop pushing and try pulling their hands apart. Again, a potential manipulation subject will find it hard to pull their hands away from each other.

Know Your Worth

The first step in overcoming manipulation is for the victim to identify that they still have value. A manipulator likely took everything from their victim. They belittled them, ridiculed them, and made them feel as though what they thought didn’t matter. In some situations, they might have even used gaslighting tactics to make their victims feel as though they’re insane. It can be hard for a victim to then recognize just how much value they still have once they become aware of the manipulation.

It’s important for everyone to know, no matter who is reading this, that you have worth. Everyone has value. No one deserves to be manipulated. No one deserves to feel as though they don’t have any purpose, reason, or value. You have the right to be treated justly, and with respect from other people. You are allowed to express your emotions, feelings, wants, and opinions. No one else has the right to tell you how to feel. You set your own boundaries, and no one else gets to decide for you.

If you feel sad about something, that is completely valid. No one gets to decide if what they say hurts you or not. Not everyone might intentionally mean to hurt you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to still feel bad. You have the right to feel the way you do, and you have the same right to express those beliefs.

If you feel like you need to protect yourself, you are just in doing so. If you feel like your safety is being threatened, or someone is taking advantage of you, you have the right to remove yourself from that situation without guilt. No one gets to treat you badly, and though that can be hard for many of us to hear, it’s the truth.

Manipulators aim to take these thoughts away. They want to deprive their victims of their rights in order to work towards getting what they want. This can’t happen anymore. It’s up to the manipulator’s victims to now recognize their worth and stop the cycle of manipulation.

Don’t Be Afraid to Keep Your Distance

Many people that feel as though they’re being manipulated end up being too afraid to do anything about it. They have been stripped of their own thoughts and opinions, their own feelings invalidated and instead focus on how other people feel. Those that have been continually manipulated might be afraid to leave those that have hurt them. They’ve depended on those that abused them for so long they don’t know where else to go.

You’re allowed to keep your distance. You don’t have to feel guilty about protecting yourself. It can be hard to separate yourself from a manipulator, especially in a romantic relationship. You might see the very weaknesses that cause their manipulative behavior. Maybe in a relationship, a boyfriend’s dad was an abusive alcoholic, and it greatly hurt him. It also caused his violent manipulative behavior that led him to hitting his girlfriend on a few occasions. It’s true that he has his own pain, but that doesn’t mean he’s allowed to inflict it on others. The girlfriend has every right to leave her boyfriend and find her own peace and protection.

Ask what is really lost by leaving the person that’s manipulating you. More often than not, value in a relationship is placed on codependent tendencies. A person is afraid to leave not because they love their manipulator, but because they are afraid to be alone. It can be scary to be on your own, but mostly because manipulators put that idea in their victims in the first place. Manipulators will trick their victims into staying with them because deep down, they know that the victim will be just fine without them.

It’s Not Your Job to Change Them

Once manipulation is recognized, the next step is to try to talk to the person about the manipulation. It’s time to get down to the root issues of the relationship and figure out what can be done to help both partners get what they need, instead of just the manipulator. There has been an imbalance of power for far too long, and it’s time to rebalance.

Unfortunately, not many manipulators are willing to admit their faults and sooner change their behavior. Instead, they’ll do whatever they can to distract others from their faults, placing the blame on their victims instead. When this happens, the victim has to accept that their manipulator isn’t going to change, and they must find the strength to leave.

There will likely be a desire to change the other person and help them improve their life as well. Not everyone will always be on the same page of their journey towards self-discovery. It can be hard to accept for some victims, but they have to realize that it’s not their job to change their manipulator.

You can only help a person so much, and if they’re not willing to change or improve themselves, it’s not going to happen. Many people wait around for the other to change in their relationship, hoping their manipulation will get better. If a person isn’t aware of their behavior and aren’t actively trying to change it, nothing is going to happen in the end.

Chapter 3                 How To Defend Yourself Against Emotional Predators

According to Mark Leary, PhD., in an article published in the Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience and the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, “[i]nterpersonal rejections constitute some of the most distressing and consequential events in people’s lives.” This assertion may seem counterintuitive. After all, every day each of us will likely experience a very high number of social contacts ranging from long, complex interactions with people with whom we share a very close or intimate bond to casual encounters with people who are familiar to us to short, quick exchanges with strangers, clients, customers, or other professionals who together comprise the social universe we inhabit.

Generally, when we think about “distressing, consequential events,” we think about catastrophic illnesses, significant disruptions to our financial or professional well-being, or the death or serious illness or injury of ourselves or loved ones. So, it may seem an overstatement to include interpersonal rejection in the category of events that we might consider “the most distressing and consequential.”

However, Dr. Leary goes on to offer a convincing argument for the basis of this theory, an argument that may also help you develop both an awareness of how important maintaining healthy emotional psychology can be and understanding the importance of social interaction to your own personal and professional success.

Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was an important contribution to theories examining emotional psychology and predation, and gave rise to theories of so-called “social Darwinism,” from which popular culture derives its belief in the “survival of the fittest” ethos and the predominance of ruthlessness and cut-throat policies as the foundation of business success. However, the more important theme of these theories of human development is that “emotions [are] … evolved adaptations that provide an advantage to survival and reproduction… In particular, emotions signal the presence of events that have potentially major implications for … well-being—specifically, important threats and opportunities in [a given] … environment—thereby causing the individual to focus on concerns that require immediate attention.”

Furthermore, though we scarcely ever think about it consciously, emotions like embarrassment, hurt, and loneliness can often signal threats or challenges that emerge as the result of our complex interrelationships. Both acceptance and rejection are social responses to our own individual behavior.

When we experience the acceptance and approval of those around us, we are overcome with positive emotions such as confidence, and we generally are satisfied that we have somehow made the right choice or satisfied some standard that will allow us to move ahead in our lives. Conversely, when we are rejected, whether by receiving negative feedback in the form of a professional proposal that is rejected, a social invitation that is declined, or being entirely expelled by a social group, we may be overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and shame. Especially when we believe we have been rejected for reasons that are not defensible or justified, we may also experience a great deal of anger.

In a normal, healthy social environment these signs of social acceptance or rejection occur without a lot of pre-meditation or conscious thought—they are simply a natural reaction among groups and individuals within groups to behavior that either conforms to or violates the established norms and values of a given society. Yet, the degree to which our survival depends upon receiving positive social and emotional responses in the form of acceptance has a disproportionate influence over our ability to succeed.

For example, if you are a highly skilled attorney working in a law firm, you may reasonably expect that your skills alone will allow you to win cases and earn the professional and social rewards you would expect. And in a normal environment in which emotional psychology operates as a social function that is subordinate to and responsive to professional performance, this would be the typical outcome. However, in an environment that may have been thrown out of balance by emotional predation and manipulation, professional performance alone may not be enough to win you the recognition and success you believe you have earned.

In fact, if the dynamics of interpersonal relationships are thrown out of balance significantly, professional performance and skill may be a secondary concern that has been made subordinate to your ability to achieve social acceptance and approval. And if the decisions about who receives social acceptance and approval are made by emotional predators, all of your professional skills and accomplishments may be regarded as a liability. So, an emotional predator can control you and hurt you by placing you in a position of inferiority and making you a captive audience in a social trap that you may not have the skills from which to extricate yourself.

Furthermore, social interactions and interrelationships are complex and difficult enough to manage in a natural setting. The contemporary environment is host to an entire complex apparatus of unprecedented developments in the form of social media, email, mobile phone technology, video conferencing, and other forms of electronic communication.

In his thesis “Emotion in Social Media,” Dr. Galen Panger, a graduate of U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information Management Systems, has identified certain parameters in his effort to determine whether the emotional psychology of social media users differs from the emotional psychology that characterizes people engaged in normal daily interactions.

According to his study, users of Facebook and Twitter did not display extreme or detrimental effects indicating that the social isolation caused by these new media has led to an increased development in antisocial personality disorder. However, he did establish that depending on the social media forum, users may tend to be more or less emotionally positive or negative. Specifically, Facebook posts were overwhelmingly characterized by positive emotional overtones, while Twitter posts tended to have a more negative tone.

Conversely, because Facebook posts tended to celebrate individual attributes in an emotionally positive and affirmative tone, Facebook users generally experienced more aggravation of negative emotions like jealousy and anger, while the negative town of Twitter posts worked to cure feelings of frustration and anger among users of the forum.

However, the study did not focus on one crucial element. The use of social media is itself an anomalous and unprecedented development in the evolution of human relationships and generally occurs when social media users are in social isolation. All true scientific studies must have a control group, but this study lacks one. The control group for any valid study of human psychology and emotion must be a natural environment devoid of technological interventions.

Although Dr. Panger’s study established that there may be less variance or distortion among social media users when compared to each other, it uses environments largely regulated by technological communication as the default. The study does not address either how these disrupted environments compare to the human social and emotional psychology in non-technological environments, nor does it consider how technological communications devices and social media may enhance the ability of social and emotional predators to work in isolation, essentially unsupervised,  to assemble profiles of their potential victims and create social personas that may strengthen their ability to succeed.

Thus, understanding the importance of emotional psychology and the presence of emotional predators is important for two fundamental reasons—our natural tendency is to seek social approval and acceptance, and our ability to succeed personally and professionally depends on maintaining an environment in which social rewards are distributed according to established norms. When this environment is skewed, whether in our own personal sphere of influence or in the larger professional or social environment in which we work or live, we lose the ability to fend for ourselves and sustain our own well-being. Upsetting this balance is precisely the goal of the social and emotional predator.

As a result, looking for signs of emotional and social manipulation in an effort to avoid such entanglements, and understanding how to respond and recover in the event we are caught off guard, are more than just refinement and sophistication; they are necessary skills for surviving and thriving in a world that has been dramatically altered and thrown off-balance in recent years.

Tips for Reading and Analyzing People

Overview: The Real Vampires

The most important step in recognizing the presence of a social or emotional predator is maintaining an awareness of the basic psychology of all emotional predators—whether they exhibit symptoms of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, or narcissism. Even if someone’s behavior is not disruptive enough to be considered a sign of serious mental illness, anyone whose relationships depend upon their ability to emotionally manipulate others should be considered as potentially dangerous to your personal or professional safety and well-being.

This is because it is neither possible nor advisable to conduct a full-scale psychological analysis of everyone with whom you come into contact and because social and emotional predators’ main skill set involves defeating efforts at detection.

All emotional predators share some common traits. As a result of some type of congenital psychological impairment at birth, as a result of some type of very serious emotionally or psychologically traumatic experience or series of experiences at a very young age, or as a result of some combination of these factors, emotional predators uniformly lack the ability to develop genuine emotional attachments with other people, to develop any deep, genuine feelings of warmth, to appreciate or value the feelings, thoughts, or rights of other people, or to develop any sense of respect for the principles and laws that govern society.

Furthermore, because these predatory individuals have learned from a very young age to live, survive, and even achieve high levels of success despite these serious psychological problems, they are unable to regard their condition as abnormal. They may regard their compromised psychological state as equal to or superior to a normal, healthy psychological state.

The second primary component common to all forms of predatory psychology follows from the first. Predators are unable to live like people who are not psychologically damaged. They are unable to form lasting, meaningful relationships, they are unable to find satisfaction in the daily routines and habits of life, and they are unable to see any value in the pursuit of traditional professional, personal, or academic goals.

Predators must live in a world that is not designed to serve their needs. As a result, the only feelings they are ever likely to develop toward so-called “normal” people are feelings of rage, jealousy, and hatred because they cannot ever have or do or experience the normal joy, happiness, and fulfillment that psychologically healthy people may take for granted.

Thus, when an emotional predator approaches you, there is a lot to consider. First, because predators have become very good at finding ways to live and hide their deficiencies, you may not realize that the person you are talking to is an emotional or social predator.

Second, people with healthy psychology can quite easily communicate with each other the reason they have made contact through basic conversation. However, a social or emotional predator cannot ever actually feel any genuine emotions and never really has any value for the goals and objectives you may consider important. They are always performing because they are not capable of living any other way. So, when predator begins a conversation with you, it may seem normal on the surface, but the motivations will also be devious and treacherous, and likely the only reason they have started a conversation is to establish trust and begin mining you for information.

Third, the goal of all predators is the same. You may likely regard your personal life and your professional career as your source of happiness and fulfillment, and your motivations may range from professional ambition to altruism and selflessness. But the predator can find happiness and fulfillment one way only—by destroying your happiness, your success, and even you. Because you have something the predator can never have, you are a constant reminder of his or her own damaged and compromised psychological makeup. Yet, predators, too, need to find some type of fulfillment and satisfaction, so they can relieve themselves of what would otherwise be an existence filled with unending boredom and pain.

Through a process of tortured and impaired evolution, the predator has learned to mimic your pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. However, because your avenues to success are off limits to predators, they have established a new route—controlling you in an effort to inflict pain, abuse, and damage on you. Thus, whereas you may feel guilt when you hurt someone, the predator feels joy and glee and relief. Your path to success is professional, academic, and personal accomplishment. The predator’s path to success ids the destruction and abuse of others. Regardless of the specifics of how these character defects and psychological impairments manifest themselves, all emotional and social predators share the same basic psychological profile.

Early Signs That You Are Dealing with a Predator

By now, we have examined the foundations of dark psychology, the psychological profiles that make up the Dark Triad, typical forms of manipulation in relationships, and how manipulation has manifested itself in society’s institutions.

First, remember that simply because you are not currently in a personal or professional relationship that could be defined as manipulative does not mean that you are free of all danger and concern. Predators have had to learn the hard way to live and achieve success using cold and calculating psychology from which they truly do not ever get any rest.

Imagine being injured in a serious accident and losing the use of one or more of your limbs—regardless of how much you would prefer to have the use of that limb back, you will be forced to find some way to adapt. Emotional predators do the same thing. But because their injuries are invisible, and because of the competitive nature of the business world, they sometimes hold an advantage over us if we fail to maintain vigilance.

Emotional predators can blend into the normal landscape because it is easy for them to go through the motions of daily living. They truly do not care if things don’t work out because they have no value for their relationships or the things that society has established as having value.

Consider that the serial killer Ted Bundy worked on a crisis hotline while he stalked and murdered young women. He appeared successful, outgoing, handsome, and well-adjusted, but was not. Or consider that the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who murdered and buried in the crawl space beneath his home almost 40 young men and boys, spent his days running a construction business, held fundraisers for local political leaders, and entertained sick children.

It may seem nauseating, especially with these extreme and dramatic examples, but for the emotional predator, important responsibilities in society are less a source of personal and professional satisfaction and fulfillment and more a perfect cover for their predatory addiction. As a result, you may find it helpful to develop some habits that will help you learn to identify some of the telltale signs of emotionally predatory behavior.

Chapter 4                 Mind Control Methods

Now, you have seen just how critical persuasion can be in several different contexts. At this point, it is time to start seeing the techniques that you can use to persuade other people. Remember, persuasion is all about being clear about what you are asking for. However, on the other hand, it is also about convincing people to do what you want. You need to be able to walk along that fine line without falling on either side if you want to be effective.

You will be guided through each and every step of the persuasion and provided with the reasoning that you should make it a point to truly develop these skills. Each has its own important uses if you are willing to put in the effort to learn them.

Principles of Persuasion

First, we will discuss the principles of persuasion. These are six different persuasive tools that you can use in order to convince those around you to behave in certain ways. They can be used on their own or in tandem with others on this list. However, what is important is that you remember that these tools are useful, and you practice them whenever you get the chance.

Authority

The first of the principles of persuasion is authority. When you seek to appeal to authority, you are simply trying to make yourself into some sort of authority figure. This is for a very specific reason.

Stop and consider for a moment—would you rather take medical advice from a random person walking down the road or from a doctor wearing a lab coat and a badge? Which would seem more convincing to you? If both of them held out a pill in their hand and urged you to take it, would you?

Many people would be willing to be treated by the doctor in the coat and with a badge. They are deemed to be an authority on medicine just because they happen to be wearing a lab coat and have their credentials printed out on their badge. The other person, however, is some random nobody, and even if they were to say that they are a doctor, you would have no way of knowing for sure, nor would you be able to verify what was being offered to you to take.

Ultimately, this is exactly the kind of divide you would see ordinarily—when there is an appeal made to authority, the one who is knowledgeable wins out. The one deemed to be more of an authority due to credentials or experience wins out in the end.

This means that when you want to appeal to authority, what you need to do is make sure that you find a way to make it clear that you are, in fact, an authority on the subject. If you are the car salesperson, maybe have letters and pictures from your happy clients that have bought cars from you and left fully satisfied after your help. Maybe you should pay attention to the fact that when people walk in, the first thing you want them to see is that you are qualified at your job. You may set up so they can see your diploma or awards, or you will make sure that they hear about it in the first few minutes of the meeting.

Commitment and consistency

The next principle of persuasion is known as commitment and consistency. When you are dealing with commitment and consistency, you are effectively playing on the fact that people tend to like what is familiar and expected. This means that people will always try to continuously follow through on a commitment that they have made, and the more often that they make that particular commitment, the more likely they are to continue to make that commitment with it eventually just becoming standard.

For example, say you asked your neighbor, who happens to be your coworker, for a ride to work. It is literally no inconvenience because you both travel both ways at the same time. After several drives in which your coworker takes you to work, it eventually becomes expected, and you no longer have to ask—you are simply waiting by your neighbor’s car before and after work each day to catch that ride. Effectively, the first time they agreed to take you, they locked themselves into a chain of repeatedly being asked by you for rides and agreeing to do so on a regular basis.

People love to be consistent—it is valuable to be consistent, and because of that, people will usually continue to follow through, even if they do not like it and do not want to continue.

You can trick people into doing things for you with this same process as well. If you want something, such as maybe wanting your coworker to cover a shift for you, you may start by asking a simple yes question, such as asking if they have had a nice week so far. Your neighbor says yes, and then you ask if they will trade shifts with you so you can make sure that you are able to go to a concert that you have been looking forward to.

Thanks to having already begun to say yes to other things, your coworker is going to be in a state of mind in which he or she is already saying yes, so they may as well continue. After agreeing to a few smaller things as well, you may run into someone who is willing to accommodate more difficult or larger requests in the name of consistency.

Liking

This is perhaps one of the most straightforward of the principles of persuasion—all you need to remember is that the more you like someone or something, the more likely you are to feel like whatever you liked is valuable, and the more likely you are to be convinced in its favor. For example, you are more likely to do a favor for someone that you really like than someone that you do not like at all.

Luckily, there are several ways that you can make it a point to become likable to someone else. You can, for example, mirror someone until they like you. This means that you would be copying their behaviors as covertly as you could possibly manage, which may not be particularly secretively if you do not know what you are doing. Upon setting everything up and mirroring the other person to the point that they mirror you back, you should be good to continue.

However, if you are unsure how to proceed with mirroring or you simply do not want to deal with it, there are other techniques you can use as well, such as choosing to intentionally make someone like you. This is not nearly as difficult as it sounds.

Start by making some sort of connection between yourself and the other party—perhaps you make it a point to comment that you can relate to the other person when they arrive with their child to an appointment. You tell them that you have a child about the same age and that going back to work at that age is just so difficult.

With the connection made, you will want to make eye contact and continue to talk. You may offer the other party some praise or a compliment, meant to make them feel like you genuinely care about what they are saying or what they think. The catch here is that the compliment that you make has to be genuine, and you must mean it.

Finally, if you want to be likable, you must make it clear that the two of you are on the same side. Perhaps you point out that you will both be working together toward getting the other person a car. Maybe you convince them that you will both try to solve their problem, no matter what it is, with them. This camaraderie set up then makes it less likely for the partners to worry about them.

Reciprocity

The next principle of persuasion is reciprocity. When you are appealing to reciprocity, effectively, you are working with the attitude that you will help anyone that helps you first. You make it clear that you are happy to help them if you think that they will respond in kind. This is not nearly as entitled as it may seem upfront.

Think about how, when a friend buys you a gift, you feel like you must reciprocate? This is intentional with human development—it is done, so you feel the urge to reciprocate when someone else is offering you something. This means that when someone else has helped you, you will be more inclined to help them when they need help. You effectively safeguard with your own altruistic behaviors to make sure that both you and the other party are able to receive in your times of need.

If you want to take advantage of this, for example, you may start by reaching out to someone that you need help from. Maybe you want your neighbor to take care of your dog while you go out of town overnight. You then offer to do something for your neighbor. Perhaps you clean up his yard before asking him if he can take care of your dog for the day. You let him know that all he will have to do is let your dog out a couple of times, and things will be fine. After having been helped by you, he feels obligated to follow through and help you out as well. He agrees to take care of your dog during your trip, and that is one less thing for you to worry about over the next several days.

Scarcity

Scarcity refers to supply and demand. Effectively, the more regular or readily available something or someone is, the less important it is. You can often see this with material items—limited edition items tend to be far more in demand than the same item in a standard color. For example, if you really want that newest game console, but you want the one specific to your favorite game series, you are likely going to have to find it on a used sale site and hope that you can find it at a regular price. Otherwise, you will have no choice but to simply trudge on ahead without that particular console.

This is because the regular console is common. It is easy to attain and therefore is not particularly important to you, nor is it deemed as valuable as the regular one to you.

Now, you may be wondering how supply and demand can relate to persuading someone to do something. The answer is that you need to make sure that you are able to convince them that you are in demand. Perhaps you find that your partner seems to take you for granted. If you have a serious talk with your partner about how you do not feel loved or respected, and during that talk, you mention that you would rather be anywhere but there because it is so exhausting to live completely unwanted.

This should cue to your partner that you will not always be available—you are only available as long as you wish to make yourself available, and that immediately ups your value. You can do this with other people, too. Reject the first attempt to schedule something with you and say that the date does not work for you. When you get to a date just a bit sooner, you can convince the other party that you are worth the money that will be put into you.  You want people to feel like they got lucky to get you. After all, you are one of a kind—treat yourself like it.

Social proof

Finally, social proof refers to the tendency of people to fall for peer pressure. This is effectively just a fancy word for peer pressure and involves you actively making a point to choose to defer to what other people are doing. If you do not know what you should be doing, you effectively decide to defer to what you see around you. If you see that your peers are dancing in a circle, but you do not know why they are dancing in a circle, you are likely going to just join in without understanding why, and that is okay. You do it anyway and never find out why.

When you want to use this form of persuasion effectively, you will just want to set up a control area. Do you remember why so many manipulators liked the home-court advantage? It is so they are able to manipulate their surroundings. You can do this, too. For example, if you want someone to do something for you, make sure that you ask them around other people that are actively doing whatever it was that you asked them to do in the first place.

For example, if you want to go around and collect signatures and donations for a cause, you would want to be sure that those around you are actively seeing that you are getting what you want. When they see that other people are signing and donating, they are more likely to do so, especially if they recognize names, or they feel like they need to keep up with their peers. Effectively, then, this works well to keep people in line just by maintaining the environment around them.

Rhetoric

Another series of techniques that can help you become more persuasive is the art of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art to speak or write persuasively in an attempt to get other people to see things your way. Dating way back to the time of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, if you are able to form your arguments with rhetoric, you can make sure that you are addressing other people in a way that is compelling and difficult to reject or ignore.

In particular, rhetoric involves three distinct methods of persuasion—these are three techniques that are commonly used in order to make sure that the other person is likely to go along with your suggestion. These are commonly referred to by their Greek names of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Ethos

Ethos is an appeal to character. It focuses on making sure that the one presenting all of the information for the listener is viewed as credible. If the speaker is not credible, no one is going to believe in what he or she has to say, which means that his or her attempts and techniques will be particularly worthless. After all, you cannot clearly convince someone else to do something if they do not trust you. This is essentially quite similar to the appeal to authority in the principles of persuasion.

Ethos primarily can be seen in advertising—when you are trying to sell something, you want to make sure you have someone credible be the one advocating for your product, and staying true to that, you often find that celebrities commonly are called in to promote the brands. Of course, those people are being paid for their time and endorsements, but the effect is undeniable. For example, imagine a local sports personality making it clear that he always drinks one particular brand of soda without fail. The next time that you are in the mood for soda, if you happen to be a fan of that particular person, you may find that you are far more likely to pick up that same brand of soda simply because your unconscious mind wants to emulate someone that you are fond of.

This works precisely because people admire others, and when they do admire someone else, they want to emulate them. People naturally want to be like the people they look up to or admire in any way, and because of that, they will be more likely to make decisions based on those admired individuals.

Pathos

The next form of rhetoric that is commonly used is pathos—this is an appeal to emotions. This is effectively coming up with a way to establish an emotion in your listeners in hopes of getting them to act in a way that you want to see. You may make someone feel sad or guilty in order to get them to donate. You may try to make someone angry in order to make them act. You may try to make someone feel happy to encourage them to like whatever you are promoting.

Ultimately, emotions are so powerful precisely because they are meant to be motivating. You are going to naturally feel inclined to act according to your emotions simply because that is why they are there. Your emotions are effectively your unconscious mind’s way of interacting with your body, creating emotional impulses that are meant to keep you alive. You may feel fear when you are being chased by a hungry mountain lion, or anger when someone threatens you—this is because your emotions are meant to help you survive, and when you are angry, you are more likely to stand up for yourself, or when you are in danger, you need to be able to act in a way that will keep you alive.

Logos

An appeal to logic and reason is the final form of rhetoric. With Logos, you arep seeking to establish as much reason as possible that cannot be denied to do whatever you are requesting. You may point out the numbers and facts that support what you are asking for, or otherwise use studies that support your opinion. Those using Logos have a tendency to throw as much data as possible at the other person, hoping that something will stick.